


Before the last scene of 01x07 (The Wedding Job)

by PseudoLeigha



Series: (More) 2AM Conversations [7]
Category: Leverage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 14:36:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6524188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PseudoLeigha/pseuds/PseudoLeigha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate and Sophie discuss marriage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before the last scene of 01x07 (The Wedding Job)

A few days after the job with the mob wedding wrapped up, Nate found his local invaded once again, this time not by Eliot, but by Sophie, who was generally better company (he had said it before and would say it again – men would pay for her company), but much more difficult to get rid of, and he wasn’t in the mood for talking.

She ordered a vodka tonic and sat next to him, ignoring the go-away air he tried to project, and then deliberately moping until he couldn’t help but ask, “Alright, what’s wrong, Soph?” At least it was relatively late, and they would be kicked out soon.

“It’s silly,” she said with a self-depreciating smile. “You’re going to laugh at me.”

“No, I won’t.” He was going to get truly and sincerely irritated with her if she didn’t give up the woe-is-me act, but he was pretty sure he wouldn’t laugh.

She heaved a dramatic sigh. “It’s this stupid wedding job. It got me thinking, and, well… I just can’t help but wonder if I missed out by never getting married. That’s all.”

“The great Sophie Devereaux secretly wants to get married?” he asked with all the sarcasm he could muster.

“Don’t all little girls? But that’s not what I said,” the woman in question defended herself. “I just… wonder what it would be like, sometimes. I wasn’t always Sophie Devereaux, you know. And there have been offers. It just… it was never right.”

“Ever been engaged?” he asked, curious despite himself.

There was real sadness in her eyes with the smile that followed. “Yes. A long time ago. In England. It wouldn’t have worked, though. He… never really knew me.”

“Never knew the real you, or Sophie?”

She shrugged elegantly. “Neither. He knew Charlotte, one of my first aliases. I meant to use him for his connections, to legitimize the persona, but I got in too deep, and couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth. I convinced myself after that if I couldn’t tell a man the truth, I shouldn’t marry him. Isn’t that silly?” There were tears in her eyes, and Nate suspected that the vodka tonic in her hand wasn’t her first drink of the night. He had never seen her weepy before, but he had never seen her drunk, either. “He was sweet. He loved me. I told myself I loved him. But it wasn’t real.” She shook her head decisively. “It never would have worked.”

“Sweetheart scam’s not your game?” he asked callously.

She gave him a watery imitation of her usual mischievous grin. “Never was, I’m afraid.”

They sat in almost-comfortable silence for a long moment, until Sophie spoke again. “Was it worth it, marrying Maggie?”

Well, that was a hell of a question. If he had never married Maggie, he would never have had Sam – that was his first thought. And, he prayed to a God he’d lost his faith in to forgive him, because he wasn’t sure if that would have been better. He wouldn’t ever have held his son in his arms, but Sam wouldn’t have had to suffer and die. But he tore his mind away from that train of thought, certain that he didn’t want to seriously try to balance whether it would be better if his son had never lived, and that that wasn’t what Sophie had meant anyway.

“She was my best friend. I loved her. I couldn’t imagine loving anyone else when I married her.” He left out that he had met Sophie three years later, because he knew she would take that to mean he loved her, and he wasn’t sure if he did, or had, or if it was only obsession. “We were happy together. The divorce was hard. I… I think I hurt her more than she hurt me. She – I – I just lost it, when Sam…” Nate took a shuddering breath, redirecting, before he continued. “I withdrew, and I think that hurt her more. She tried to be strong for me, but she couldn’t, because she didn’t know. And I couldn’t be there for her because… I just couldn’t. It just… It wasn’t working anymore. I think… I _think_ the years we were happy outweigh the misery. But not by much.”

Sophie waited an appropriate amount of time before she said, “I wish I could have met her. The woman who won your heart. All those years you spent chasing me, I couldn’t help but be a little jealous of her.”

Nate resisted the temptation to tell her that Maggie was probably more jealous of Sophie, those years, for exactly the same reason. He had never cheated on Maggie, but she knew that they had… something… something _more_ than the usual investigator-thief relationship. Sophie was probably just fishing, anyway.

“She’s not _dead_ , Sophie.”

“I _know_ that. But people change. I don’t have anything against the woman she is now, but I always wished I could have met the girl you fell in love with.”

“You are being weirdly invasive,” Nate said, before his brain could catch up with his mouth. Coworkers, even coworkers you had spent the better part of ten years flirting with as you chased them across half the world’s major cities, shouldn’t tell you that they wanted to meet the girl you fell in love with. That was something he would have expected _Parker_ to come out with, not _Sophie_. (Except it was also very, very Sophie in a strangely covetous, possessive way.) “I mean – that is…” he gave up explaining when he realized she was sniggering.

“I know, I know, it’s weird. I just… Back before everything, I had this idea of you in my head, and I only ever saw you in that one mode, you know, on the hunt. But I had this image of you, and what you might be like outside of all that, in, you know, your _normal_ life.”

“That was my normal life,” Nate pointed out, uncertain as to where this conversation was headed.

“No, shut up,” Sophie said lightly. “I had this sort of character Nate that I imagined living a life outside of chasing me across Europe” “And Asia, and North America,” he interjected, compelled to interrupt in defiance of her order. “Yes, and Australia, once, do you remember Sydney?” Nate nodded. He couldn’t possibly _forget_ Sydney, no matter how much he might want to. (He didn’t count it, really, though. Sydney had been a nightmare, all tedious paperwork and third-rate hotels, and he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of her the entire three weeks he was poking around. He wasn’t entirely sure she was actually in Australia for most of it.) “But hush. The point is, I liked to imagine that you were happy with Maggie and Sam,” Nate was fairly certain he made some sort of involuntary noise of pain, remembering the times when he _was_ happy with Maggie and Sam, like a sucker punch on the heels of thinking of Sydney. Sophie ignored it. “And that, well, you got to live the life of happily wedded bliss that I never did.”

Now Nate was laughing – something that he had not expected when she walked into the bar, let alone in the last two minutes – something which, if pressed, he wasn’t sure he could remember the last time he had done. It started out sarcastic, taunting, ironic – but under her exasperated, half-pained gaze, grew to be more genuine, despite the fact that he knew she was pushing all of his buttons in quick succession (He was forcibly reminded that she _was_ the best at what she did, and she had always been able to play him like a cheap fiddle, but he pushed that thought away.)

“Oh, _Nate_ , you said you wouldn’t laugh at me!” she protested, smacking him playfully in the arm with her tiny, useless purse-thing.

“I didn’t laugh at you for wanting a white wedding! I’m laughing at you for wanting to be me,” he defended himself.

“Ooh, shut it, you,” she said, slipping off her barstool. “I never wanted to be you, I just wondered, sometimes, what it might have been like. You know, the road not travelled.”

At that, Nate suddenly felt about twice as sober. Oh, yes. He knew all about wondering about the road not travelled.

Apparently cheered by their conversation, or having gotten whatever it was that she wanted out of him (though he had no idea what that might have been, besides cheering up), she sashayed toward the door. He had to stop himself saying, ‘Wait! Come back.’ It wasn’t made easier by her pausing at the last moment to call back to him, “Oh, and Nate – If I ever do get married, I’ll wear red!”

He can’t help but smile a little as he thinks of Sophie in a brilliant red dress, though in his fantasy, she’s not in a church at all. He can’t help but think of the red dress she wore the first time he saw her (though it will be days before he realizes it was ten years ago exactly). 


End file.
